Special Seminar - 3/26 - 3 PM - Chen Fang (Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences) - Jadwin JH room

SUPERDIFFUSION IN QUANTUM MODELS FROM MOMENTUM-SPACE NODAL STRUCTURES
Date
Mar 26, 2025, 3:00 pm4:00 pm
Location
Jadwin Hall - Joseph Henry room
Audience
Faculty, post docs, grads

Speaker

Details

Event Description

Transport behavior in a macroscopic system is qualitatively classified by the scaling exponent of the resistance with respect to the length: $R\propto{L}^\gamma$. $\gamma=1$ gives the Ohmic resistance and corresponds to the diffusive transport; $\gamma=0$ in the ballistic transport, only realizable in ultra-clean 1D systems or topological edge states. $0<\gamma<1$ corresponds to the "superdiffusive transport", where quantum numbers like charge or energy dissipate faster than the diffusive, but slower than the ballistic transport, and is considered anomalous. In this talk, I introduce the "nodal-structure mechanism" for superdiffusion that is realizable in three different scenarios where a Bloch band coexists with (i) quantum noise from Lindbladian operators, (ii) disorder from local impurity operators, and (iii) fermion interactions. In each scenario, the Lindbladian/disorder/interaction operator commutes with the Bloch band number operator $n_k$ at certain $k_0\in{BZ}$ called the "nodes". The Bloch states near the nodes have long quasiparticle lifetime, and are shown to lead to superdiffusion. Using this mechanism, we have found disordered systems in 1D and 2D that violate Anderson localization, and the first nonintegrable model showing superdiffusion at high temperatures. We show that in realistic materials, these nodes may naturally emerge if the Fermi surface wavefunction has nonzero topological numbers (e.g., the Chern number), or if the elementary band representation (EBR) of the Bloch band mismatches that of the impurities.